Belgarath the Sorcerer (63 page)

‘Who among mortal kind is so foolish as to thus defy the King of the World?' Torak roared. ‘Who among ye would contend with a God?'

You have to admire the cunning of the Necessity which spoke through Brand's lips. Torak had been very reluctant to meet Brand in single combat, but his rage overcame his better judgement. Torak, always the sublime egomaniac, absolutely
had
to respond to those insults.

‘I am Brand, Warder of Riva,' the Child of Light replied, ‘and
I
defy thee, foul and misshapen Godling, and all thy putrid host. Bring forth thy might. Take up my gage or slink away and come no more against the Kingdoms of the West.'

That was
really
pushing things. Torak was still a God, and prohibition or no prohibition, that particular speech might very well have pushed him over the edge. I had a momentary vision of a repetition of the cracking of the world at that point. He didn't do it again, however, but he
did
bash a few more boulders with his sword.

‘
Behold
!' he roared in a voice that probably broke windows in Tol Honeth, ‘I am Torak, King of Kings and Lord of Lords! I fear no man of mortal kind nor the dim shades of long-forgotten Gods! I will come forth and destroy this loud-voiced Rivan fool, and mine enemies shall
fall away before my wrath, and Cthrag-Yaska shall be mine again and the world, also!'

In spite of everything that had warned him against it, he'd accepted Brand's challenge.

The exchange between the two of them had caused a vast silence to fall over the battlefield. Many soldiers, both mine and Zedar's, seemed paralyzed by the sheer sound of those two thundering voices. The fighting stopped, and the only sounds were the groanings of the wounded and the dying. The challenge and its acceptance laid the full burden of the Battle of Vo Mimbre on Brand's shoulders - and on Torak's.

Torak strode north, and his Malloreans melted out of his path as he came. Brand, equally implacable, marched south to meet him. I went wolf, and I trotted along at his side. There was a snowy owl drifting above him.

Brand was a big man with heavy shoulders and powerful arms. In many ways he closely resembled Dras Bull-neck, though he wasn't quite as tall. His shield was strapped to his left arm, and he'd taken some pains to rivet a grey Rivan cloak to the face of it to conceal my Master's Orb. The sword he was carrying wasn't
quite
as large as Iron-grip's sword, but it was large enough that
I
wouldn't have wanted to swing it.

Torak was wearing that antique black armor, and he was brandishing Cthrek Goru as he came. The agreement between the Necessities kept him from swelling into immensity as he did at Cthol Mishrak when he met Garion, but he was every bit as big as Brand. So far as I could tell, the two of them were evenly matched. Since neither of them had any particular advantage - either in size or weaponry - this promised to be a very interesting duel.

They advanced on each other until they were about twenty yards apart, and then they both stopped, evidently acting on instructions. Brand spoke once more at that point. ‘I am Brand, Warder of Riva,' he introduced himself in a civil tone of voice. ‘I am he who will contend with thee, Torak. Beware of me, for the spirits of Belar and Aldur are
with me. I alone stand between thee and the Orb for which thou hast brought war into the west.'

Torak didn't answer him, but spoke to me instead. ‘Begone, Belgarath,' he told me. ‘Flee if thou wouldst save thy life. It occurs that I may soon have the leisure to give thee that instruction I so long ago promised thee, and I doubt that even thou wouldst survive
my
instruction.'

I've never been sure why he bothered with that. He should have known what my answer would be. I bared my teeth and snarled at him.

Then he spoke to the owl hovering in the air over Brand's head. ‘Abjure thy father, Polgara, and come with me,' he said in an oddly wheedling tone of voice. ‘I will wed thee,' he continued, ‘and make thee Queen of all the world, and thy might and thy power shall be second only to mine.'

That marriage proposal has given Polgara nightmares for five centuries now. It's also seriously confused the Grolims. They've always stepped rather carefully around Pol ever since. They did
not
want to offend the chosen bride of Torak. I suspect that he'd gotten the idea from the Ashabine Oracles, and it was probably that same passage that'd given Zedar the idea for his cruel deception of Illessa.

The scream of an owl is usually just a scream, but Pol managed to fill the one she threw into Torak's teeth with all sorts of defiance and scorn to let him know just what she thought of his proposal of marriage.

‘Prepare then to perish all,' Torak roared at us, rushing forward with his black sword upraised.

That made me a little nervous. I'd just seen him shatter a number of large boulders with that sword.

Brand didn't even change his expression when he raised the shield to ward off that massive blow.

If you've ever seen a fight between a couple of men armed with broadswords and shields you know how badly the shields get dented and gashed. Brand's shield, however, showed no visible effects as Cthrek Goru bounced harmlessly off its face. Torak's huge blow didn't even cut
through the grey cloth that covered the shield. My Master's Orb was clearly taking steps.

Torak's
shield, however, didn't seem to be quite so impervious, because Brand's return blow sliced deep into its rim.

Torak struck again, and his second blow had no more effect than the first.

Then it was Brand's turn, and his stroke left a deep dent in the face of Torak's shield.

That went on for quite a while. They banged at each other with those huge broadswords, raising a dreadful amount of noise and spraying sparks in all directions every time their sword-edges met. They reeled back and forth, struggling to keep their balance on the uneven ground. Brand still seemed to be in the grip of that unnatural calmness, but Torak grew increasingly enraged. He bellowed at the grave-faced Rivan facing him, and his sword-strokes came faster and faster. Despite the huge weight of Cthrek Goru, Torak was swinging it almost as rapidly as an Algar horseman might swing a saber. The sheer fury of his attack was driving Brand backward.

Then, with a stroke that changed direction in mid-swing, Torak gashed open Brand's left shoulder.

‘
Well, finally!
' that familiar voice said. ‘
I thought they were going to be at it all day. Go ahead and give the signal, Belgarath. Let's finish this right now
.'

I did it without even thinking. I didn't
have
to think. The instructions had been floating around in my head for almost three thousand years. I dropped to my haunches, lifted my muzzle and howled. And, at exactly the same instant, the white owl screamed a piercingly shrill scream.

Brand jumped back and scraped the edge of his sword down over the face of his shield, ripping off the grey cloth that had covered it.

Kal Torak flinched back violently as my Master's Orb blazed forth its baleful blue fire. The smoldering fire that always glowed behind the left eye-slit of his steel mask suddenly blazed forth like a small sun.

He screamed, and Cthrek Goru fell out of his violently trembling hand. He shook away his shield and tried to clutch at his face. His right hand covered his right eye, but he had no left hand to cover the other.

Then Brand struck the final blow of their duel, and it was
not
an overhand stroke. It was a thrust. He seized his sword hilt in both hands and lunged forward, and his thrust wasn't aimed at Torak's chest or throat or belly.

It was aimed directly at Torak's burning left eye.

Brand's sword made a terrible sound as it slid through the visor of Torak's helmet and an even worse sound as it crunched through that flaming eye and on into the brain of the maimed God of Angarak.

Torak screamed again, and it was not so much a scream of pain as it was one of unutterable loss. He clutched at the blade protruding from his eye and jerked it away. Then he threw away his helmet, and then clawed away that steel mask.

It was the first time I'd seen his face since the day when he'd cracked the world. The right side was still unmarred and beautiful.

The left side was hideous. The revenge of my Master's Orb had been too horrible to imagine. There were still inflamed scars, of course, but there were parts of Torak's face where the flesh had been burned away and bone showed through.

His left eye no longer flamed. It wept blood instead.

Most of the epic of Davoul the Lame is very badly written, but its climax isn't too bad, so I'll quote it here.

 

‘… and raised he up and pushed his arms even into the sky and cried out again. And cried he out one last time as he beheld that jewel which he had named Cthrag Yaska and which had caused him to be smitten again, and then, as a tree hewn away at the ground, the Dark God fell, and the earth resounded with his fall.'

And that's what
really
happened at Vo Mimbre. Whole libraries have been written about the battle, but with only a few exceptions - mostly written by Alorn scholars - those lurid accounts miss the truly significant events that led up to the duel between Brand and Torak. Everything we did was designed to force Torak to accept Brand's challenge. Once we put him in a situation where he didn't have any choice, the outcome was inevitable.

The fall of their God totally demoralized the Angaraks, and the Ulgos and various others had killed their kings and generals so there wasn't anybody around to give them orders. Angaraks don't function well independently. Someone very wise once said, ‘It's all very well to put the government in the hands of the perfect man, but what do you do when the perfect man gets a belly-ache?' That's the major argument against any kind of absolutism.

The Malloreans, of course, were doomed. They were surrounded by people who had every reason to hate them, and forgiveness and mercy weren't very evident as the armies of the west fell on the luckless invaders like the wrath of a whole pantheon of Gods.

The Murgos on the left flank really didn't see any reason to rush to the aid of their Mallorean cousins. Murgos don't like Malloreans in the first place, so there weren't any strong ties between the two races - not without Torak ramming brotherhood down their throats. There weren't really any orders given. The Murgos simply turned, fled south to the banks of the River Arend on the east side of the city, and tried to swim across. The current was very swift there,
and the river was deep. A few Murgos made it across, but not very many.

The Thulls had already bolted to the river just to the west of Vo Mimbre. Thulls aren't bright, but they're strong, and they weren't weighted down with mail-shirts the way the Murgos were, so a surprising number of them made it across to the Tolnedran side. The Nadraks tried to follow them, but Nadraks don't swim very well, so probably no more of them reached safety than did Murgos.

The slaughter continued until dark, and then the Alorns lit torches and kept on killing Malloreans

Finally, General Cerran came to Brand. ‘Isn't that enough?' he demanded in a sick voice.

‘No,' Brand replied firmly, adjusting the sling cradling his bandaged left arm. ‘They came here to butcher us. I'm going to make sure they don't do it again. No seed nor root is going to escape this cleansing.'

‘That's barbaric, Brand!'

‘So was what happened to Drasnia.'

And after midnight when the torches had burned down, Brasa's Ulgos went around and killed all the wounded. I didn't care for that kind of savagery any more than Cerran did, but I kept my nose out of it. Brand was in charge now, and I still had things for him to do. Those things were very important, and he might start getting stubborn and uncooperative if I started giving him orders he didn't like.

The dawn the following morning was bleary with smoke, and the only Angaraks left on the field were the dead ones. Malloreans, Murgos, Nadraks, Thulls, and black-robed Grolims lay scattered or piled in heaps on that blood-soaked field. Brand's cleansing was complete.

The Rivan Warder had slept for an hour or two at the end of that awful night, but he came out of his tent when the sun rose to join my brothers, my daughter and me. ‘Where is he?' he demanded.

‘Where's who?' Beldin said shortly.

‘Torak. I want to have a look at the King of the World.'

‘You can look for him if you want to,' Beldin told him, ‘but you're not going to find him. Zedar spirited him off during the night.'

‘
What?
'

‘Didn't you tell him?' Beldin asked me.

‘He didn't need to know about it,' I replied. ‘If he
had
known, he'd have probably tried to stop it.'

‘He couldn't have, you dunce - any more than you or I could have.'

‘Does somebody want to explain this?' Brand's voice had a testy edge to it.

‘It was part of the agreement between the Necessities,' I told him. ‘Those agreements get very complicated sometimes, and they appear to involve a lot of horse-trading. After they'd agreed that you'd win if the duel took place on the third day, our Necessity was forced to agree that you wouldn't be permitted to keep Torak's body. This wasn't the last EVENT, you know. We haven't seen the last of Torak.'

‘But he's dead!'

‘No, Brand,' Polgara told him, ‘actually, he's not. You didn't
really
think that sword of yours could kill him, did you? There's only one sword in the world that can do that, and it's still hanging on the wall behind the throne of the Rivan King. That was another part of the agreement, and it's why the Orb was set in your shield instead of left where it was. You
aren't
the one who's supposed to use that sword.'

‘Hang it all, Polgara,' he burst out. ‘
Nobody
survives a sword thrust through the head!'

‘Torak can - and has. Your thrust rendered him comatose, but the time's going to come when he'll wake up again.'

‘When?'

‘When the Rivan King returns. He's the one who's supposed to take down that sword. When he does, Torak'll wake up, and there'll be another EVENT.'

‘Will that be the last one?'

‘Probably, but we're not entirely sure,' Beltira replied. ‘There are several things in the Mrin that don't match up.'

‘Is Gelane going to be able to handle it?' Brand asked Pol. ‘He doesn't seem all that muscular to me, and Torak's a very serious opponent.'

‘I didn't say it was going to be Gelane, Brand,' she corrected him. ‘It probably won't be, if I'm reading the signs correctly. It might be his son - or somebody twenty generations out in the future.'

Brand's shoulders slumped, and he winced and put his hand on his wounded arm. ‘Then all of this has been for nothing,' he sighed.

‘I'd hardly call it nothing, Brand,' I disagreed. ‘Torak was coming after the Orb, and he didn't get it. That counts for something, doesn't it?'

‘I suppose,' he conceded glumly. Then he looked out over the corpse-littered battlefield. ‘We'd better get rid of all these dead Angaraks,' he said. ‘It's summer, and there'll be pestilence if we just leave them lying there to rot.'

‘Are you going to bury them?' Beltira asked him.

‘No, I think we'll burn them instead. I wouldn't be very popular if I took everybody's sword away from him and handed him a shovel.'

‘Where are you going to get that much wood?' Beldin asked.

‘There's a sizeable forest on the northern edge of this plain,' Brand replied with a shrug. ‘As long as it's so close, we might as well use it.'

 

And
that's
what happened to those woods. We had a lot of dead Angaraks on our hands, so we needed some very large bonfires.

 

It took several days to clean up the battlefield, and while we were all concentrating on that, Aldorigen of Mimbre and Eldallan of Asturia went off a ways to have that private
discussion Eldallan had proposed before the battle. Neither of them survived that discussion. The symbolic significance of that useless meeting wasn't lost on the older nobles of both duchies. The Arendish civil wars had lasted for eons, and if they were permitted to continue, it was very probable that Mimbre and Asturia would follow their rulers into extinction.

Mandor and Wildantor led the deputation that came to Brand with a rather surprising proposal. ‘Our hatreds run too deep, Lord Brand,' Wildantor noted glumly. ‘Mandor and I've learned to get along, but we're a couple of unusual fellows. We can't really hope that other Arends might be willing to follow our lead.'

‘You all cooperated fairly well during the battle,' Brand replied. ‘Couldn't you build on that?'

Mandor sighed and shook his head. ‘Our uneasy truce doth already begin to show signs of strain, Lord Brand,' he said. ‘Some ancient grievance will surely arise to rend us apart again.'

‘Our problem's fairly simple, my Lord,' Wildantor said with a rueful smile. ‘Arendia needs to be unified, but who's going to rule once we get it pasted together? No Asturian alive will bow to a Mimbrate king, and the Mimbrates feel the same way about Asturians.'

‘Where are we going with this, gentlemen?' Brand asked.

‘We needs must have a king who will unify poor Arendia, my Lord,' Mandor replied gravely, ‘and our mutual animosities suggest that this king cannot be Arendish. Thus, after extended consultation, have we come to offer the crown of Arendia unto thee.'

Brand blinked. Fortunately, he was wise enough not to laugh. ‘I'm honored, gentlemen, but I've got responsibilities on the Isle of the Winds. I can't very well rule Arendia from the city of Riva.'

Mandor sighed. ‘Then is poor Arendia doomed to endless civil strife,' he mourned.

Brand scratched at his cheek. ‘Maybe not,' he said. ‘Didn't Aldorigen have a son?'

‘Prince Koradullin, yes,' Mandor replied.

‘And didn't Eldallan have a daughter?'

‘Mayaserana,' Wildantor said. ‘Now that her father's dead, she's the Duchess of Asturia. She's a very strong-willed girl - pretty, though.'

‘Would you say that the two of them are patriots?'

‘Everybody in Arendia's a patriot, Lord Brand,' Wildantor replied. ‘That's part of our problem.'

‘Doesn't that suggest a solution to your quandary? A king who was either Mimbrate or Asturian wouldn't be able to rule, but how about a joint rulership? If we could persuade these two young people to get married and rule jointly …' He left it hanging.

The two Arends looked at each other, and then they both burst out laughing, and the laughter spread through the rest of the Arends.

‘Did I say something funny?' Brand asked them.

‘You don't know those two, my Lord,' Wildantor said gaily.

Mandor was still chuckling. ‘Thy proposal
doth
have some merit, my Lord. A marriage between Korodullin and Mayaserana might well serve to quiet dissension in the rest of Arendia, but methinks our civil war will continue, though it will be confined to one household.'

‘Is it
that
bad?'

‘Worse, my Lord,' Wildantor assured him. ‘We
might
be able to keep them from killing each other - if we chained them to opposite walls of the royal bed-chamber, but anything less probably wouldn't work. Their fathers just killed each other, remember?'

‘Why don't you bring the two of them here and I'll talk with them. Maybe if I appeal to their sense of patriotism, they'll go along with the idea.'

Wildantor looked very skeptical. ‘What do you think, Mandor?' he asked his friend. ‘Is it worth a try? We could
search them both for weapons before we brought them here.'

‘Gladly would I brave anything to heal our poor Arendia,' Mandor swore fervently.

‘Stout fellow,' Wildantor murmured.

‘That's the most ridiculous proposal I've ever heard!' Mayaserana screamed when Brand presented his idea to her and Korodullin. ‘I'd sooner die than marry a Mimbrate butcher!'

‘Gladly would I help thee to accomplish that end, outlaw wench!' Korodullin offered.

It all went downhill from there - quite rapidly.

‘I really think you children ought to think this over,' Pol suggested smoothly, cutting across the screaming. ‘You both need to calm down and talk about it - someplace private, I think. Tell me, my Lord of Mandor, thinkest thou that there might be some secluded room where our youngsters here might hold their discussions without interruption or distraction? At the top of some tower, perhaps?'

‘There
is
a secure room at the top of the south tower of the palace, your Grace,' he replied a bit dubiously. ‘It hath oft-times in the past served as a prison for miscreants of noble birth whose rank forbade their being incarcerated in the dungeon.'

‘Barred windows?' she asked, ‘and a stout door that can be locked from the outside?'

‘Yes, your Grace.'

‘Why don't we all go have a look at this room?' she suggested.

‘It couldn't hurt to look,' Brand replied.

I took my daughter by the arm and drew her aside. ‘They'll kill each other if you lock them in the same room, Pol,' I muttered.

‘Oh, I don't think they'll go that far, father,' she assured me. ‘They might yell at each other, but I don't think they'll get violent. There are certain rules of behavior in Arendia that prohibit violence between men and women.'

‘But not between Mimbrates and Asturians.'

‘We'll see, father. We'll see.'

And so Mayaserana and Korodullin became cell-mates. There was a lot of screaming and yelling at first, but we didn't really mind that. The yelling proved that they were both still alive, after all.

I've always meant to ask Polgara if the notion of imprisoning those two together was her own or if Garion's friend had suggested it to her. Given his twisted sense of humor, it might very well have been his idea. On the other hand, Pol's very wise about the peculiarities of the human heart, and she knows what's likely to happen when two young people are alone together for any extended period of time. Polgara's arranged a long series of marriages, so she's very good at it.

Anyway, after we'd locked the two of them in the south tower of the palace, we moved on to other things. No war or major battle is ever complete without an extended conference after the fighting's over. We were all a little surprised when the Gorim of Ulgo came to join us in our discussions. The various Gorims have almost never come out of the caves. Ran Borune was tied up with affairs of state in Tol Honeth, so Mergon represented him, and Podiss came north to speak for Salmissra.